6 minute read
Taking the reins
TAKING THE REINS: ALISON BALSOM & INON BARNATAN, FESTIVAL DIRECTORS
Advertisement
Alison Balsom and Inon Barnatan speak to George Hall about programming, audience development, and balancing their new roles with performing careers
Recently, two major performing musicians have been announced as the Artistic Directors of major international festivals. In the UK, trumpet player Alison Balsom takes over the venerable Cheltenham International Music Festival, founded in 1945 and successfully run for the last decade by Meurig Bowen; while in the United States, pianist Inon Barnatan assumes the music directorship of the Summerfest held in La Jolla every August since 1961.
Balsom’s appointment was announced in late 2017 and her first programmed festival will be in 2019. When did she first become aware of the event? “Very early on in my career. It’s a wonderful British institution, and as classical musicians it’s on everyone’s radar”.
She’s thrilled at the prospect of getting involved with an event possessing such a great history. “Obviously it has a wonderful legacy of showcasing British contemporary and now international contemporary music, and it’s also got an incredible atmosphere. I’ve performed in the Town Hall on a few occasions, but this is my first time really getting to know the organisation intimately.”
The 2018 programme has been almost exclusively planned by departing director Bowen. “I’m making one or two appearances to show continuity over a period which represents a bit of us both.”
Balsom has been working intensively on the festival since January 2018. “My first week in the job I had to think, who do I need to book now? I wanted to make sure that my favourite artists and ensembles hadn’t already been booked up, so I thought I’d better get in there with my first phone calls to the big cheeses in the industry.”
She is clearly looking forward to tackling some of challenges the position will pose. “It’s a huge opportunity for me to work in an area with which I’m very familiar and which I love greatly, but from a different corner of the table in terms of the approach: how to make things successful, how to make a vibrant, exciting event so that all types of people will want to come – people who are very loyal, discerning concertgoers who have been coming to the festival for decades, but also those who have never been and who hopefully I can persuade to come for the first time.”
Cheltenham houses not only the celebrated music festival, but similar events based around other artistic and intellectual pursuits. Do people get confused by all the things going on? “That is our challenge, as the Cheltenham Festivals plural – music, jazz, literature, science. We are almost victims of our own success. Cheltenham is a festival town, and things work so naturally here that there does seem to be some sort of festival happening almost all of the time.”
“Each of them has a different demographic. One of my biggest desires is to try to attract some of those audiences loyal to other festivals, and who are already committed to leaving their front rooms and their TVs and spending money on a ticket for something, to come to ours. I want to find a way of saying, “this is for you as well”, so that there will be something nourishing in the music festival whether or not they’re used to going to it.”
Naturally Balsom will continue her career as a leading trumpeter: so will this new job put further demands on her time? “Anyone who’s freelance knows how difficult it is to divide up your time, so trying to carve out the time for practice and keeping my own performing career going while also thinking in an entirely different way about how to pull together an immense event is a bit of a juggling act.”
She’s absolutely certain, though, that her experience as a trumpet soloist used to programming her own recitals will stand her in good stead. “The challenge over my entire career has been to find repertoire which I can get my teeth into and which has artistic integrity, but which at the same time has meaning for a wide audience – whether that’s the people who follow me all the time, or children, or people who have heard the Haydn Trumpet Concerto performed in 50 different ways.”
As far as festival programming goes, “the classical repertoire is so completely masterful that we want to present as much of it and as wide a variety as possible, but in a way that makes it completely beguiling to people who are maybe scared of the concert hall. Cheltenham has some wonderful venues with beautiful acoustics where music can soar and come alive.”
“Programming is fascinating because you can go in any direction. You don’t have to do the obvious things: you can contrast pieces in a really surprising way, though it has to be very well thought-through. In a festival you can have that sense not just of a one-off concert, but of a journey. I do hope to be able to put my personal stamp on my time in Cheltenham.”
Pianist Inon Barnatan, meanwhile, is looking forward to doing the same with the La Jolla Summerfest – an event which is entirely devoted to chamber music. How did he become aware of the festival? “The summer’s when I get to indulge my love for chamber music and I’ve been going to La Jolla as a participant for quite a few years.”
He has always loved the location, too. “It’s such a special place – the very southern tip of California before you get to Mexico, one of the most beautiful areas of the United States.” He enthuses about the cliffs, the seals barking, the pelicans and the ocean; “coupled with chamber music”, he says, “that made it hard to say no.”
And there will be a new hall in the middle of La Jolla village. The acoustics for the 500-seater hall at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center are being looked after by Nagata Acoustics – who also worked, inter alia, on Suntory Hall, Walt Disney Hall and many others. It opens in April 2019, and so Barnatan’s first festival will be the first Summerfest to be held there.
He also pays tribute to his long-term predecessor as artistic director of the event, the leading Taiwanese American violinist Cho-Liang Lin, known to his friends as Jimmy. “If I’m not mistaken he’s been there for 18 years”, Barnatan explains. “He’s a wonderful violinist and a wonderful guy, and has done wonders with the festival: he’s also the one who invited me in the first place”.
“I have big shoes to fill, but I have my own ideas and musicians that I love playing with who I would love to invite. With everything you take on, you have to decide whether you are going to be an evolutionary or a revolutionary.” Which is he? “I think I’m going to be an evolutionary with just a bit of revolution dropped in at strategic points!”
Above all Barnatan is the keenest possible advocate for the festival’s raison d’être. “To me, chamber music is an integral part of how I view my musical life. I feel that if I didn’t view my work as a soloist with an orchestra as chamber music, then the performance would be the poorer. All the things I do – chamber music, playing as a soloist, playing with orchestras – feed into one another: there is a tremendous amount of synergy between the three. Now, having a festival, I have a sandbox in which I can explore ideas and projects and think about programming – which is something I do generally in my career, but which I can explore here in a broader sense.”
How much of his time will be involved? “I’ll be there for the month of August every summer, and during the year I’ll fly in for a few planning meetings. Most of my time related to the festival is spent thinking about it. I do a lot of planning on planes, for example – so it weaves very nicely into my current life.”
Summerfest, of course, has its regular audience, but Barnatan is keen to develop it further. “Having this wonderful new hall will help tremendously. I think my job is to offer something that will make people come back. We’re always thinking about how to get people into the hall for the first time – but actually the most important thing is to think, how do you get them to come back regularly?”
He has specific ideas about how he might do just that. “One thing that classical musicians don’t think about enough is the theatrical aspect of concerts. What is the experience like if you go to a concert as an audience member? Having a festival allows you to play around with what it means to experience the event as a whole, and to make it as compelling as possible.”
But he also wants audience members to feel included. “During the season there is often this sense of family – a feeling of closeness and intimacy. I want people to feel that they are very much part of it, not just as observers or listeners but as part of this dedicated musical family that follows the development of the festival from beginning to end and from year to year.”
George Hall is a freelance writer contributing regularly to newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Stage, Opera, Opera News & BBC Music Magazine.